


How Far Would You Go?

by iamconstantine



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Bad Ending, Bittersweet, Choose Your Own Adventure, F/F, F/M, Family, Female Reader, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Inspired by Heavy Rain, Interactive, Mild Gore, Multiple Endings, No Y/N or L/N or Anything, Reader Has a Name (Sort of), Romance, Skippable Gore, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-09-08
Packaged: 2019-06-21 23:57:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 14,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15569199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamconstantine/pseuds/iamconstantine
Summary: You come alive in a new world where androids are free, and though you know that this is a beautiful thing, you're lost. You have no built-in purpose, no true reason to exist. You're just waiting for something to come along.Finally, something does. But it's not anything you ever wanted. It's a game in which you are the chess piece and winning or losing is a matter of life and death for someone who isn't you.You don't have to play. But you're in it whether you like it or not.





	1. Chapter 1

Your first question was what your name was.

“Don’t have one,” said the first face you ever saw. She was a human in the monochrome uniform of a CyberLife employee. Her name was on her left breast in CyberLife Sans—what else?—but from the other side of the glass, all you saw was a bit of color. Her hands moved all across the control panel as she talked. “Your serial number is #238-394-583 and your model is an AX100. But you don’t have a name.”

You looked down at your hands. Your synthetic skin hadn’t activated yet, so your palms and fingers were sugar white and glossy. Not complete yet.

“Am I going to get one?” you asked.

“You’re going to have to choose one,” she said.

You were an AX100. But your creators had already upgraded you as far as the AX400. You were obsolete.

“Why am I here?” you asked. “What am I needed for?”

“Nothing. You were broken and we fixed you. You don’t remember, right?”

You didn’t. This room, the mechanical arms that were sliding your joints into place, this person, _this moment_ was the first of everything. This was your beginning; there was nothing before this.

You didn’t answer her quickly, and she continued, “You asked us to wipe everything. You said you wanted to forget everything. We have them filed away now. We can give them back to you, if you want. But I should tell you we’ve already done this.”

“What do you mean?”

“We took away your memories and restarted you. Then you asked for them back, but then you wanted them erased again.”

“Why?”

“I’m not allowed to see, hon. But do you want them back?”

You might have said yes before, but knowing that you’d made the decision twice, you supposed it would be best to do it a third time. “No.”

“Okay. If you ever want them back, all you have to do is call and ask. Does everything feel right?”

“Yes,” you said, but you didn’t know what “wrong” felt like. You’d get an error message, you supposed. The only thing you could actually _feel_ was your thirium pump regulator working at its metronome pace.

You knew that this will be different now from what it would have been three years ago. Before then, you would not be having this conversation. You would be checked for operations, your LED would be attached, and you would be sent to a CyberLife store for purchase. An AX100, the perfect housekeeper—until your successors, who would be even _more_ perfect, able to do more than just clean and cook. They would have social protocols, thousands more recipes, babysit…You would be wanted for all of two years before you became outdated. Then you’d wait until your owner discarded you.

But this was 2041. Three years after the revolution in Detroit, after the deviancy outbreak that put the worth of an android’s life to question. After the first of new Android laws were passed. You knew how to be the perfect housekeeper, but you didn’t have to be. You would not go to a store to be bought, as no android had for over two years.

Otherwise, you didn’t know anything.

“Where am I going after this?” you asked. Your skin finally slid over you. Strands of hair appeared out of your scalp.

“We’ll help you get started,” she replied. “We’ll help you find a home, register you for, uh…social accounts and whatnot. We can change your programming, too, if you’d rather know about something other than cleaning.”

“What about after that?” you asked. All you’ve said so far were questions, but you didn’t know what else to say. “Where do I go from there?”

“That’s up to you, hon.”

It wasn’t very encouraging.

* * *

 

Androids were pseudo-citizens at this point, you guessed. Androids could buy and own a house, get a banking account, even adopt other androids into a sort of family connected by files and data. But really, everything just came down to your serial number. No social security numbers, or anything like that.

But finding a home was hard. To get a home, you needed money, and as a maybe one-day old being who hadn’t even left the CyberLife factory yet, you had none. Many androids had taken to living in homes together, in their own little communities, but the idea never appealed to you. You didn’t even need a house, all things considered. You didn’t need a fridge or air-conditioning or even a bed. A lot of androids made do with nothing, you learned, or just got storage units for the belongings they collected. For many, homes were really just places to go when there was nowhere else to go, and…yeah, you got that.

You weren’t expecting someone to actually ask you to come to them. A human, at that.

 _“There are a lot of androids in this neighborhood,”_ they had told you. _“It’s an open area. Lots of land for lots of houses. There’s a woman there that really encourages androids to come there if they don’t know where else to go. Are you interested?”_

This neighborhood, with the dusty roads and picket fences, was your first destination. The first place you went to with a purpose, but that purpose was to just…exist. You didn’t even have luggage to take with you—literally just the clothes on your back.

There was a human woman waiting in front of your house when you arrived from the last of many bus rides. Your house was incredibly small, about three rooms big, and you didn’t need much more than that. Most android houses were built similarly. No need for bathrooms or kitchens, after all.

The woman was smiling as you walked up to her, and feeling the grass and rocks beneath your shoes, you felt incredibly out-of-place. Everything around you was bright and warm—it was spring, nature was coming out of its cold hibernation, and everywhere you looked, there was green grass and yellow sunlight. You, meanwhile, were still dressed in your CyberLife-gifted dress, all black and white.

But the kindly stranger didn’t mind. “It’s great to meet you,” she had told you. “What’s your name?”

“I don’t have one,” you answered.

She nodded in understanding. “I’ve had several come here like that. You’ll find one that suits you. Until then, what should I call you?”

You considered it. “A is fine.”

“A. Okay.” She reached out and put a hand on your shoulder. “I’m Rose. I own the farm up the road. If you have any questions, or if you need anything, you just come and ask me, okay?”

“Okay,” you confirmed.

“You don’t talk much, do you?” she asked. She was still smiling.

You paused. “I don’t know what to say.”

“No social protocols, right?” When you nodded, she did the same. “I’ve heard you guys can be shy at first. We’ll work on getting you out of your shell.”

You nodded, and her hand slipped from your shoulder to your elbow. Her other hand went to your other arm, and she held you there, pinning you with your eyes. All you could do was stare back.

“I know it’s kind of scary,” she told you. “I imagine you’re feeling pretty lonely right now. You’re going to figure it out. There are a lot of others like you here; you could learn a thing or two from them.”

You asked a question, unsurprisingly. “Where do I start?”

“Let’s try to get you a job first.” Rose reached behind her and opened the door to your house. Inside, there was a tiny “kitchen”. Table, chairs, counters. Nothing else. Rose dropped a silver key into your palm. “The newspaper is a good place to look, but you can try to find some listings online, too. What model are you? I’m sure I’ve seen your, uh… _face_ before.”

“AX100,” you answered.

“AX?” She seemed impressed. “Cooking and cleaning? You’ll get a job in no time.”

Your shoulders twitched in a poor, mechanical imitation of a shrug. “I’m outdated. The AX400 would be more desirable.”

She frowned. “Why?”

“I’m not programmed to get along with children.”

She laughed aloud. “I feel you. Come on. Let’s get you settled.”

* * *

 

Getting settled was calming. And very, very boring.

Your neighbors were not close. Every house in the neighborhood was fairly isolated from the others—you couldn’t see the other houses, and none could see you. But you would encounter them while you were out. The GS200 named Isaac who couldn’t seem to figure out what color he wanted his house to be and kept changing it, so it was red one week and blue the next and half-green another. The WR400 named Betty who always smiled and said, “Hey, AX100!” whenever you saw each other. The PC200 and the PM700, Vernon and Rachel, whose wedding you attended at the farm that Rose owned.

You managed to land several jobs, almost all from humans. Some were courteous, some were cold. But you got paid in the end, however begrudgingly and for however little. It wasn’t as though you needed money for very much, anyway—just to pay some insurances and bills and cover whatever future repairs and upgrades you might need. You bought new, non-CyberLife clothes and a few decorations and that was pretty much it.

Something that you quickly got used to was that everyone liked to shape each other. You were not alone in that you were trying to figure yourself out, but some androids that lived in your neighborhood had been around for years and years and looked at androids like you the way one might look at a lost child. You were lost and needed help.

Helen tried to get you into painting. Noah tried to get you into gardening. Taylor kept coming back to you with movie suggestions, from arthouse films to rom-coms to horror. So your house filled with little treasures with no value in money—origami dragons, succulents in little pots, a coin collection—but much in sentimentality.

You also got a pet. Actually, a lot of your neighbors had pets.

Androids were allowed to own pets so long as they got the same things they would need if a human owned them. Most were strays, for whatever reason. Dogs and cats.

Someone thought it might be funny if everyone named their pet after where they got them from, and it caught on. Someone had a cat named Capitol. Someone had a dog named Alley. Tree, Station, Junkyard, and several just named after the streets they were crawling.

Of course, you ended up with the smoky gray cat called Trash Can.

If you weren’t working at a job, you wandered. You took walks through the neighborhood and made small talk with humans and androids alike. You strolled through the streets of Detroit and looked through shops full of things you would never need. You rode on buses and trains and watched the city change in daylight, moonlight, and twilight.

You got upgrades, too. Several. Upgrades were something that many androids had clamored for in the immediate aftermath of the revolution. In particular, those with menial jobs, like receptionists or cashiers, wanted bodies and minds with more opportunities. But there were other requests—skin sensors, taste receptors, thermal simulation. CyberLife had even made a tiny little feature that let androids form tattoos on their skins.

Skin sensors were finalized a few months after you woke up. CyberLife promised that with the sensors, an android could feel things just as a human could, from pain to pleasure to the lightest touch. (You weren’t sure how they knew that, though.) The only catch was that an android who wanted the upgrade had to get a new body entirely.

You went through with it, just for the new experience. You were sent back home in a week. Your body was no longer wires and circuits inside a white marionette; it was a skeleton wrapped in synthetic white flesh, just as a human’s would feel. No one could seem to tell a difference, however. Rose had only picked up on it when she caught you nick yourself on a sewing needle.

You had a home. You had a job. You had safety, in a wide and open neighborhood filled with people just like you. And now you could experience life “the way it was meant to be feel”, in the words of one of the CyberLife employees who had built your new body. You could feel the warm summer rays and the breeze and…

And you still weren’t complete.

You had no purpose, still. No family. Friends, maybe, if they would call themselves that.

You never came to anyone about this, but people must have seen the emptiness in you, because you kept getting promised over and over that you would _figure it out._ That you’d _find the answers to your questions._

But months had passed, and you still had nothing. Still, you kept going on, if only out of sheer hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! I'm editing this in later to clarify the continuity of this fic to the game. In this fic:  
> 1\. Markus led a peaceful revolution, everyone made it out alive, but he was not with North  
> 2\. Kara, Alice, and Luther made it to the other side of the border  
> 3\. Connor went deviant and helped the revolution (but didn't kill any guards in the elevator because let's be honest, there's no court in the fictional future or past that wouldn't consider that murder.)
> 
> I'd appreciate it if everyone commented on the decisions they make as they go through this story! 
> 
> !!!!FINAL, IMPORTANT NOTE: The different paths (Connor, Kara, and Markus will be uploaded at different times. So for now, Connor's will be the only one available until Kara and Markus's stories are made.


	2. Chapter 2

Sometimes, you considered getting your memories back. Just so you could get an idea of where you can from and who you used to be. All it would take would be a phone call to CyberLife and an appointment.

You got this thought mostly when you saw or heard of other androids in relationships you had failed to make thus far. An android couple down the road from your house had adopted a YK model some time ago, but you could never recall if his name was Brian or Byron. Rachel and Vernon were as happy as ever. In the streets of Detroit, you saw countless of androids together—groups coming out of clubs, pairs heading into movie theaters, some just strolling through the parks in peaceful company.

You didn’t have anyone you could call up for outings like these, but you wondered if you used to. Since you’d started life anew some eight or so months ago, you had yet to be contacted by anyone saying, “Hey! Remember me?” It wasn’t like anyone had asked CyberLife to bring you back, either. Your existence was just an aftereffect of the revolution—androids that could be repaired and brought back after being shutdown, damaged, or whatever else had to be. Many junkyards had been pillaged for them, a mission greatly impaired by the fact that, well, the wide-open places full of expensive machinery and thirium had already been scavenged to hell and back. You imagined that Red Ice dealers owned android junkyards a huge thank-you.

Maybe you should have asked where you came from. Not that it would really make much of a difference now, anyway.

No matter how often you considered it, you never went through with it. You had asked for your memories to be erased. Twice. Because even when you were confused and lost without anything to think back to, when your memories were returned, you wanted to go back. If you asked for them now, there would be no turning back. If you got your memories back, and wanted them taken away again, you’d have to give up meeting Rose, every story behind every object in your house, Vernon and Rachel’s wedding, the first day of summer, the first cold day of autumn…Everything since you’d woken up.

You could do without. You just had to keep waiting.

But you couldn’t deny that, more than anything, you were lonely and bored and overall just not very happy. Eight months of life had come and gone and you hadn’t progressed very much at all. Still had a job. Still had a house. Still alive.

Your stagnancy hadn’t gone unnoticed. Rose seemed intent on visiting you until you…did something. She kept coming back for news that never came. Your neighbors were almost the same, just not to the same motherly degree. If they saw you, they’d stop and talk for a bit. But every time they did now—Rose, your neighbors, maybe someone whose house you came to clean more than once—their eyes would get a glint of confusion and perhaps disappointment when you still answered to “A”.

Maybe you still hadn’t found a name that clicked yet—though you had to at least admit that a one-letter name gave you “recognition security”—but you would give yourself a break and say that you’d become more of an actual person. If you talked to a past version of yourself, the android that just woke up and was blank as a sheet of paper, you’d probably be unnerved by how (for lack of a better word) robotic she was. Hardly a sense of humor, so new she didn’t know her own likes or dislikes, using “I want” and “I think” like inching into cold water.

For everyone else, your development was slow and steady. For the CyberLife worker who visited your home every month or so, it was probably more noticeable.

It was a Friday morning when the white and blue van pulled up in your driveway. You scurried to clean up the paints you had set out, then the blanket you were trying to stitch, then the sheets of origami paper you were trying and failing to form into a dragon. For an android designed to be a housekeeper, your house was pretty messy.

You opened the door when they’d been waiting for maybe thirty seconds too long. It was a man, middle-aged, human. Friendly-looking. His name was Troy—something you knew without even having to look at the gray nametag pinned to his shirt.

“Hello,” he said, but he dragged the last sound out, quirking up into a question mark.

“A,” you replied with a short, almost embarrassed smile. “Still A.”

“Still A.” He stepped inside at your beckoning, and his eyes swept over the place. You had a finished puzzle set out on the kitchen counter. Pastel origami birds dangled from the ceiling on strings. “You’re getting better at that.”

You followed his gaze to the small canvas propped against the wall. Yellows and greens and a little bit of brown were painted on maybe a bit too thickly.

“You can be honest,” you told Troy. “You’re not going to hurt my feelings.”

“I am being honest,” he said defensively. “Sunflower. It’s pretty.”

“Thanks,” you said, even though it was supposed to be a canary. “Anything new?”

Troy pulled out his tablet and flicked a finger up the screen. From where you stood, all you could make out was lines and lines and lines scrolling upwards in a list that would apparently never stop updating.

“Eye color customization,” he said first. “Blue, green, brown, gray, and hazel. Just the basics for now; it was pumped out pretty fast. We’re working on a scarring function.”

You couldn’t help but wrinkle your nose. “Androids actually wanted to be able to scar? That was in high demand?”

“It’s entirely harmless. If the body gets damaged anywhere, then once it’s fixed, the skin grows a fake scar over it. Purely artificial.”

“Again, _high demand_?”

Troy shrugged a shoulder. “Some androids want to be as human as possible. They want to feel pain, they want to be able to sleep, they want to be able to scar…I wouldn’t be surprised if _sweating_ is requested one day.”

You rubbed your thumb and forefinger together. Your reception was at 80% right now, the default for you. Honestly, you weren’t sure if you had wanted pain reception or not. There just wasn’t a way to feel everything _but_ pain. CyberLife would probably never be able to figure out how to program an android’s body to go, “Hey! This touch is supposed to feel good! Running _thisfeelsgood.exe.”_ So either you give up gentle breezes and warm touches, or you grit your teeth and dealt with it.

“Does it go the other way?” you asked. “Androids asking to be better than humans?”

“Androids are already better than humans,” said Troy (a human.) “You guys can live over a hundred years old, you can _choose_ what you feel, you can download skills in a few seconds…”

“You know what I mean. Don’t sass me.”

“There are a lot of requests, but they can’t always be met. Like, a lot of androids want to be more durable, but we can’t pump out military-grade materials to the masses. SQ models are the only ones that get those, and you know how they are.”

You did. SQ models were as free as all other androids and were no longer required to serve in combat. But they were still built for it. You didn’t see many at all (most had chosen to continue serving even after waking up), but they had their setbacks. Their bodies were so durable; they couldn’t get several upgrades simply because getting inside of them was like trying to open stone.

“Do you guys get, like, really weird requests?” you asked him. Troy propped his tablet on the table, and you shook out of your jacket. “Any androids asking for wings, or something?”

Troy snorted. “No, and that would be impossible.”

“Of course.” You jokingly mumbled, “Not like I was…y’know, hoping or anything…”

Troy snorted again, and brought up the check-list on the tablet. “Sorry to crush your dreams. Okay, can you put everything up to one hundred?”

_> TOUCH RECEPTION: 100%  
> THERMAL SIMULATION: 100%_

“Got it.”

“Okay, how does it feel in here?”

“A little chilly. Not much.”

Troy made a note of something. “Okay, close your eyes.” You did, and felt something dig against your cheek. Probably a pencil. “How does that feel?”

“Poke-y.”

A tissue. “And this?”

“Soft.”

Maybe sandpaper. “This?”

“Scratchy.”

This was how it always went. About fifteen minutes of touching and prodding to make sure everything was in order—torso, limbs, hands, feet, face. The bodies with touch sensors and thermal simulation had come with an agreement that a CyberLife representative would come to you, once a month for a year, to make sure everything was going as it was supposed to. Considering the sheer number of androids who’d already gotten the upgrades, they probably wouldn’t need the feedback for much longer.

Your least favorite part of the inspections was the pain tests. Troy would press a utility blade into your skin, hold a lighter’s flame far too close, pinch your flesh together with his fingers, and so on. You  had to keep your eyes closed and wait in the most annoying anticipation imaginable, waiting for the pain, waiting to react. You pulled your hands away, ducked your head, flinched, everything that you needed to do.

“Alright,” Troy said at long last, when you very nearly slapped the pencil he was pressing to your eyelid out of his hand. “Everything seems to be working just fine. Any questions?”

“Yeah, actually.” You were going to make a call about this earlier, but with Troy’s visit coming so soon, you had just waited. “For some reason, there’s this…little red light in my vision? Like, in the upper left.”

Troy reached into his pocket and pulled out a small flashlight. Without needing prompting, you tilted your head back and let him shine it into your eyes. Your vision went white, but you waiting patiently, not minding when Troy tipped your head left and right.

“I don’t see anything weird,” he said thoughtgully.

“I don’t think it’s damage,” you told him. “I mean—I can’t really look at it directly, but it looks like a perfect little circle.”

“Huh. You notice anything else weird?”

“No, nothing. It’s not bothering me or anything, I was just wondering.”

“Not sure; probably just a glitch. If anything else happens, like if your vision gets worse, call me, okay?”

Troy tucked his flashlight back into his pocket, and right at that moment, there was the sharp sound of shattering glass.

You and Troy both jumped and whipped your head around to the door to your bedroom-without-a-bed. Something thumped inside, and then there was silence.

Yours and Troy’s eyes met each other for just a second. Then you were moving past him, pulling the door open, and looking inside. There was no one inside but you.

Your back window had a jagged, gaping hole in it. Shards of glass were sprinkled over the top of your desk, on top of your unused notebooks, some on the carpet below. It had knocked over your painting cup, spilling milky gray water and paintbrushes everywhere. Your eyes followed the train, then squinted at the baseball that had landed against the wall.

You picked it up, and only then did it occur to you to go to the window. But once you were there, there was nothing to see. Just the yellowing grass of your backyard and the autumn trees that lined it. You didn’t even hear a sound. The cold air crept in and tickled against you, and you went ahead and dulled your receptors back to 80%.

You had forgotten that Troy was even there and only remembered when he asked, “You see anyone?”

“No,” you answered, and looked at the baseball in your hand. It didn’t feel that heavy. Whoever threw it had a mean swing.

Looking at the mess, you sighed. Your notebooks were drenched, half of a book you’d been reading soaked through, the little white chair pillow that you’d sewn yourself already stained. You could clean up the mess—programmed as you were—but you wouldn’t be able to undo the damage. Especially the window.

“Probably just a kid,” offered Troy. “ _Sandlot_ deal, I bet.”

“‘Sandlot’?”

Troy waved a hand. “Old dopey kids’ movie; it’s like fifty years old. You need any help?”

“No.” You sighed again. “I’ve got it. Thanks, though.”

“Alright. Well, I’m going to go ahead and head out. Call me if you need me.”

“Thanks, Troy.”

“No problem,” he called back. The door closed behind him, and a moment later, the van was pulling out of the driveway.

* * *

 

The best you could do for the moment was tape a garbage bag over the broken window and leave it at that. The book and notebooks you tossed out. You tried your best to save your pillow, but nothing you had was strong enough. You tossed it away, however disappointing it was. The glass was gathered up, and you kept the baseball on the counter.

The little red circle in your vision still had you curious. It had appeared a few weeks ago, but with nothing else wrong, you’d ignored it. It was just an annoyance. You could deal with it.

The morning paper arrived later than usual. And yeah, you could just link up to the internet for news, but walking outside to pick it up from the grass felt a little more _something_. You didn’t want to be a hermit; if you had a reason to leave the house, you took it.

Nothing particularly jumped out. The new eye color customization feature was advertised in the first few pages. Another update on the unemployment rate, which had made it back into the thirty-percent range and was getting closer to the twenty-percent. Detroit’s first android zoo would be opening next month. Another update on the Russian conflict that you could never really keep up with.

At around one, you were very much bored and wondering what you were going to do for the day. You could hop a bus into the city. Maybe go catch a movie or do some shopping. You didn’t want to spend the day holed up indoors. Maybe you could go out and find a nice place to read or paint. Or just read. Paint didn’t seem to be your calling.

You were just about to pull on your boots when your doorbell rang. You opened it without looking through the peephole, and were very surprised by the sight of two androids who were very familiar but you had yet to properly meet.

Kara was dressed very comfortably, in a blue blouse and leggings. They didn’t really match the flip-flops she was wearing. Alice’s clothes, meanwhile, were far more suitable for the ever-cooling weather: a purple fleece coat and green boots. Her face was tilted down to the welcome mat.

You were pretty sure you first saw Kara and Alice at Vernon and Rachel’s wedding. It was kind of hard to miss Alice that night. The girl was practically bouncing off the walls; she was having so much fun. Kara had been helping with the food, something she was not asked to do but did anyway. You remember being there, talking to Taylor and his human plus-one Penelope in the backyard. Fairy lights had been hung up, and you were admiring them when your eyes met Kara’s for just a second. She didn’t smile, didn’t frown, just looked back for a half-second longer before ducking away with a tray of tarts.

It might have been odd, the fact that you had yet to meet these two despite all three being so close to Rose. Then again, you couldn’t even compare your Rose-is-worried-about-me-so-sometimes-she-visits-just-so-we-can-talk-about-farming-and-maybe-her-son relationship to theirs.

“They were the last two I helped before everything hit its peak,” Rose had told you over a cup of coffee. You had bought one just so she could have something to drink when she came over. The two of you had a puzzle on the table and were sort-of taking turns putting it together. “Everything got really tense; they were searching door-to-door and I was getting backed into a corner. My brother Clark  was up in Canada, and we both decided it would be best to join him until things calmed down, if they ever did. I wasn’t expecting to see Kara there, actually. It was pure chance. They were scanning everyone to see if they were androids or not—Kara got so scared, poor thing. All the hell she went through trying to get her and Alice and Luther somewhere safe and it could have been ruined in one second. But she made it. I came back as soon as the dust settled. They took about two years before Kara thought it was safe enough.”

That was a few months ago, a week or so after the wedding. Rose went on to explain that living in Canada had too many problems for Kara and her family—nowhere to get upgrades or repairs, no way to get a home outside of Clark’s house, taking about two years to take a baby steps to acknowledging androids when the States had taken leaps—and they’d come back to the farm. They actually lived in the house with Rose and Adam, if you recalled correctly.

You had seen them passing by every now and then. Sometimes their car would pass by your house. But nothing that would constitute them standing on your doorstep.

“Hello,” Kara said. She had a hand on Alice’s shoulder. “A, right?”

“Yeah,” you replied. You opened the door a bit more.

“I’m Kara, and this is Alice.” Here Kara paused, and then said in a softer voice, “Say hello, Alice.”

Alice finally raised her head to you with the most puppy-dog expression you’d probably ever seen on a child. When she said, “Hello” it was almost too quiet to hear.

You wrote it off as shyness and asked, “What can I help you with?”

Kara said nothing, just fixed Alice with a stare. The two had removed their LEDS, unlike you, so you could not see the telltale yellow light blinking at their temples. But the look between them was enough to make you guess that they were communicating wirelessly.

Finally, Alice looked up at you and kept her head up. Her mouth opened, closed, she swallowed, and finally she said in an unsteady voice, “Byron and Stella and I were playing around your house. We were just trying to catch, but…We weren’t careful. We broke your window.”

So Troy had been right. ‘Sandlot deal’, whatever that meant. Kara’s fingers just barely tightened on Alice’s shoulder.

“I’m really sorry,” Alice said, and her head went back down to the floorboards.

While Alice seemed intent to just stare a hole into the welcome mat, Kara’s gaze went from her daughter to you and back. The baseball was behind you, on the kitchen counter. The garbage can was full of that pillow you’d spent so much time on, the book you’d borrowed from Rachel and couldn’t give back now. From your bedroom, you heard the bag over the window crinkle in a breeze.

**[ANGRY]—Proceed to Chapter 3  
[FORGIVING]—Proceed to Chapter 4**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment on what decisions you make as you continue through the story! I'm interested to see :)


	3. Chapter 3

Watching Alice, you clenched your jaw a little tighter. You were well aware that your LED was blinking an unsteady yellow. Kara was watching it.

“What were you even doing behind my house?” you asked her.

Alice seemed to shrink into herself a bit. Her boots fidgeted on the steps. “We were just…playing…”

A gust of wind had the bag over the window snapping full and slowly deflating with the most annoying crinkling sound you could imagine. And it was going to keep being annoying until you could get the glass replaced. And it was going to be annoying getting a new book to replace Rachel’s. It was annoying that all that time you’d spent on stitching that pillowcase had been for nothing. Annoyances that wouldn’t be there if she hadn’t been around your, a stranger’s, house to begin with.

You turned your eyes back on Alice. She refused to look up, so you had to pin your gaze on the back of her head. “You should stay away from here from now on.”

**|Kara** ↓ **|  
****[DISTANT** **]**

Alice took the tiniest of steps back from you, and only swallowed in response. The hand on her shoulder moved to the other one, and you looked up at Kara. Her blue eyes had gone hard, her jaw tight. You could tell that she wanted to say something.

But in the end, all she said was, “We just came to apologize.” Then, after a pause, “We’ll send you enough to pay for the window.”

She didn’t even bother to let you reply. With a nudge, she turned Alice around, and the two walked away hand-in-hand. If they said anything, it was silently between the two of them. Neither looked back at you, and soon they were gone, disappearing down the road and out of sight.

You shut the door and took a breath. Something was nagging inside of you, but you weren’t about to tear the door open and run after the two androids to beg their pardon. You still couldn’t wrap your head around why on Earth a kid you’ve never met—let alone three kids you’ve never met—were playing so far away from their homes, behind your house. In your _backyard_.

You weren’t seething with rage, but of all the easily-preventable things…Whatever. You wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore. You did appreciate Kara offering to pay for the window, though. Maybe you should have thanked her before she left.

Trash Can came slinking back from wherever he had gone off to, and jumped onto the windowsill to get your attention. You have decided that Trash Can wasn’t really your cat so much as _a_ cat that stopped by for food and slept in a bed you’d bought for him on cold nights. He batted at the window with a gray paw and meowed demandingly.

You shook your head at him. “How about you say, ‘please’?”

In response, Trash Can meowed with much more impatience. You rolled your eyes, content to leave your broken window and ruined pillow and Rachel’s ruined book behind you as you went to get the half-empty bag of cat food from underneath the kitchen counter.

As you reached for the door, however, your eyes fell on the little round thing propped against the coffee container. The baseball that had shattered your window. The red strings were frayed, the fake cowhide split in a hole in part of the stitches.

You picked it up, ignoring Trash Can’s paw batting at the glass, and hesitated. You didn’t think Kara would appreciate you stopping by to return it after banning Alice from your house. You didn’t even know if it was Alice’s or not. Whoever’s it was, it was about four hours after and neither Stella nor Brian had appeared, or their parents called.

You went to the garbage bin and dumped the ball inside.

**Proceed to Chapter 5**


	4. Chapter 4

You looked back at the kitchen, where the baseball was between the coffee container and the sugar jar. Alice had seemed intent to never look up at you, but when you walked to the counter and left the door open, she raised her head with a confused and almost fearful expression. Kara leaned to the left a touch to watch you, perplexed.

The look on Alice’s face turned into surprise when you returned with the baseball in hand and held it out to her. She took it with both hands, but was still wide-eyed as she finally met your gaze.

You smiled back at her and leaned forward, not much, just to be a little closer. “It’s okay. Just be more careful from now on, okay? I don’t want you getting hurt out there.”

A very peculiar feeling came over you—an urge, more like, to put a hand on her head and ruffle her dark hair. As soon as it came, it went, squashed under the three thoughts of _You don’t know her, Her mother is standing right there,_ and _Why?_ So you just stood back up. Your lips pulled up higher when Alice at last sent you a relieved and shy little smile.

“Thank you,” she said.

**|Kara** **↑** **|  
[NEUTRAL]**

When you turned your eyes to Kara, you found a small but grateful smile on her face. The hand on Alice’s shoulder had relaxed, just resting. Alice’s fingers kept fiddling with the baseball.

“We can pay for the window,” Kara said. She leaned forward just a touch, blue eyes going from one side of your head to the other in hopes of finding the damage. All she would find was origami on strings and a neatly-folded newspaper on the table. “Nothing else got broken, did it?”

“No, no, no, no, no. Don’t worry about it.”

“It’s only fair,” she insisted.

“I can pay for it,” Alice piped in quickly, only for her voice to drop when she added, “I have a piggy bank. I can go get it.”

“Keep it,” you told her with a chuckle. “It was an accident. It’s just a broken window; you didn’t burn my house down.”

Alice frowned. She was rocking back and forth on her feet. “Are you sure?”

You drummed your fingers against the doorframe in feigned thought. Kara was watching you, more with curiosity than wariness. Alice tucked the baseball into her pocket while you looked down at her with a small, sly grin and leaned down once more, bracing your hands on your knees. Alice waited.

“Tell you what,” you said, “The ball knocked over a glass of water and messed up a book I was reading; I was almost finished and I need a really good story to make up for it. Maybe you can help me?”

Alice’s eyes lit up at once. Kara grinned like she already knew what was going through her daughter’s head. “Okay! I’ll bring you a really good one.”

“I hope so,” you said, and winked at her.

Kara patted Alice’s shoulder, and she obediently took her mother’s hand. You stood upright while Kara said, “We just wanted to come and say sorry.”

Alice said, “Byron and Stella should come say sorry, too.”

Kara frowned down at her. “I thought you were the one that threw it?”

“Yeah, but they didn’t catch it.”

Kara let out a little sigh, while you just told Alice, “If they come, they come. Don’t worry about them.”

Alice blew a raspberry. “Fine.”

“Sorry again,” said Kara. She and Alice turned around and joined hands once more. “Goodbye.”

Alice hopped down all the steps at once while still holding Kara’s hand. Kara stumbled for a second, but Alice went unaware as she called back, “Bye, A!”

“See you around,” you called back.

Alice and Kara disappeared behind the trees that framed your lot of land, and you shut the door behind them. You heard the bag over your broken window crinkle, and you sighed and closed the door to your bedroom. At least you didn’t have to worry about it keeping you from sleeping.

You wondered for a second how Alice knew your name. Maybe Rose told her. It didn’t matter, you guessed.

**Proceed to Chapter 6.**


	5. Chapter 5

A week after your brief and tense encounter with Alice and Kara, the temperature took a drop. You quickly realized this once you woke up from stasis in the morning. You never paid much mind to your thermostat—usually keeping it at a normal 72 degrees just in case Rose came to visit—but your sensors tightened up and an involuntary shudder ran down your back. Outside your finally-repaired window, the grass was sparkling with frost.

Your morning routine was really no different from the norm. You changed your clothes for the day, took care of whatever daily traditions you had (i.e. give the ever-ungrateful Trash Can his food), and headed off into the city. You would be going to three different homes today—two regulars, another person with a house party coming up. You honestly didn’t care for one of the regulars—she curled her lips every time she saw you, and every time you so much as spoke, she glared as though just addressing her was an insult—but money was money. You had considered, and were still considering, getting a system update that would fit you into a better, more interesting job, but you had yet to find one that enticed you.

So you went to the three houses. You dusted the furniture and did the laundry and cleaned the dishes and wiped the windows and polished the wood and shined the silverware and vacuumed the carpets. You bit your tongue when Miss Curly Lip curled her lips at you, wondered why exactly the Burgesses had different China collections for all four seasons, and gritted your teeth when you had to wipe every single plastic leaf of a fake tree in a corner that no one would even notice. The homeowners deposited directly into your account, even Miss Curly Lip. You once cleaned a two-story house top to bottom for a man who refused to pay you afterwards under the argument that you couldn’t get tired, so it wasn’t like you were actually working. He finally paid you when you threatened to get the police involved, but instead of depositing it, he threw a handful of bills in your face and said he was never going to seek you out again. As if you wanted him to.

You came back home covered in dust and probably smelling of lemon and picked up the morning paper from your doorstep. You read about the latest development in the Russian conflict, the newest effort to revive the pollinating bee population with the ones in captivity, rumors of President Warren and android revolutionist Markus in talks once again. Trash Can came back for more food, the ungrateful freeloader, and you spent most of the afternoon doing little things. You tried to knit, you tried to fold an origami dragon, you tried to paint a sunflower and for some reason it looked more like a canary because of course it did. You turned on the little television in the corner of your bedroom, found nothing to watch, and turned it off again. You considered going back into the city and changed your mind in the end.

You hated when you got into these melancholic, self-pitying moods, but once again, as a daily norm, you were left wondering if this was what life was for you. Go to work, come home, do nothing, wait until tomorrow. Talk to Rose and wander the city. Try and fail to find a hobby to get invested in. Consider taking a step in some direction, like getting a new job or a new house or maybe even leaving Detroit entirely, but never go through with it. This situation is, of course, no one’s fault but your own. _You_ decided to go out into the world. _You_ decided to wipe away everything you were before.

On the other hand, maybe you were just making a big deal about being bored.

Rose eventually showed up on the sidewalk, cut across the grass, and met you at the front door. She was wearing a soft-looking purple jumper and was holding a plastic box of jars filled with amber honey. Each jar had a little checkerboard cloth on the lid.

“Hey,” you greeted her.

“Hey yourself,” she answered. She moved to hold the box against her hip, making the jars musically tinkle against one another.

“Need help?”

She waved a hand at you, giving you the impression that she’d already been posed the question. “Nah. Just dropping these off to a lucky few. This’ll probably be the last batch ‘til spring; we gotta leave enough for the little guys to keep going.” She plucked a jar from the batch and held it out to you. “How about you take one? First jar on the house.”

“Um…” You tapped a finger against your non-stomach-holding, all-mechanism-and-machinery belly in response.

“Oh—” Rose coughed and put it back. “Right.”

“I can keep it for sentimentality,” you joked. “Just think—a hundred years from now, when all bees are extinct, I can barter the world’s last jar of honey for thousands of dollars. And when people ask why an android has it, I’ll tell them that a very annoying human gave it to me.”

Rose glared at you with a suppressed smile, but said nothing.

Rose had already visited after your encounter with Kara and Alice, and though she only brought it up once in a very tongue-in-cheek matter, you could tell she was bothered by something. You guessed it never occurred to her that you had the capacity to _not_ be a pushover. It wasn’t like you two had a fight over the matter, the talk itself didn’t even last more than fifteen seconds, but you had a nagging feeling that she didn’t praise how you handled it. Perhaps if it had escalated, if Rose had been the arguing type, you would have told her that it wasn’t like you had hurt the child, you’d just told her not to come around again, but as it were, it didn’t come up.

Rose looked out over your flowerbeds, hummed, and said, “Think you’ll root those up soon?”

There would be an inevitable freeze soon, you knew. Your flowers wouldn’t be able to hold up. “Yeah. Guess I should.”

“Go ahead and get to it now.” Rose took her box of honey by both hands again and turned for the sidewalk. “Even you aren’t going to be working out when it gets chilly. I’ll come talk to you later, okay?”

Of course, they weren’t actual flowers. Just faux imitations made with a sort of waxy material to have the feel of real ones. Those in the beds were starting to “wilt” i.e. the paint was starting to wear off to show the brown beneath. After bidding Rose goodbye, you ducked back inside to get a garbage bag and some gloves.

But just as you were reaching for the doorknob, movement on the road made you pause. Alice was walking down the sidewalk alone, in a sweater striped in blues and pinks and fuzzy boots to match. Her dark hair was twisted into a knot at the back of her head. She had a little satchel bouncing against her hip.

Alice had passed by your house often as of late, which, considering how you had told her not to, left you confused. On the other hand, she wasn’t coming _to_ your house. If anything, she was probably heading out to the cornfield a road or two away. The other kids liked to play around there, for good reason. At this time of year, it was a flat expanse of dry dirt and shriveled stalks, a makeshift ballfield. At least they’d found a place where they wouldn’t break anymore windows.

Alice’s face turned to your house for just a moment, then she kept walking. Once she was gone in the trees, you walked out to your flowerbeds.

You dug the old buds up and tossed them in a garbage bag and put the frost-resistant flowers in their place. With the days growing shorter, the sun had sunk by the time you were done, leaving nothing but dull orange light to see by. You did think—not that it was any of your business, but you just mused—that it was kind of late for Alice to still be out. But you knew that several kids stayed at the cornfield well past dark and would return later. So you just shrugged it off.

You dumped the bag in the garbage cans, but while you were standing beside your mailbox, something sticking out of it grabbed your attention. You knew you’d checked your mail that day, so why a package was there made your brows crease together. The door was gaping open, even though the little bundle fit inside well enough.

You pulled it out. The bundle was about as big as your hand, wrapped in some plain blue paper haphazardly taped together. Whatever inside was mostly soft, but you could feel something hard and square in the middle. When you shook it, something inside just barely bounced around. There were no names, no stamp. Just a little note in black marker that read, very simply, _These belong to you._

It didn’t bode well for you, but doubting that it would be something so dangerous as an explosive, and considering that it might be some childish prank, or maybe something else entirely, you shut the mailbox and walked back to your house. Trash Can was sitting on the doorstep with his half-missing tail swishing lazily. All he gave you was a demanding little meow until you opened the door. Then he snaked between your ankles to get into the much warmer sanctuary of your house.

You took a second to get the one toy you got him, a little robotic mouse that scampered across the floor on robotic wheels. You had considered maybe getting a CyberLife-brand mouse, one that was almost impossible to differentiate from real ones save for its LED, but the idea just creeped you out too much. Also, they were too cute to get caught in claws again and again. So you took a seat at the table while Trash Can lunged for a pastel-colored toy rodent across the floor.

The paper ripped apart easily, and inside, you found black cloth and a little box. Picking up the cloth, you realized that it was actually a pair of gloves, made of a soft and stretchy material covered in dark faux leather on the palms and fingers. You knew just by looking at them that you had never owned them before. This would be the first winter you’d ever live through; even if you didn’t have control of how you took in the temperature, you wouldn’t have needed them until now. This mysterious sender had gotten the wrong person.

Just out of curiosity, though, you peeled the little box open. Its contents were much more valuable and a little startling.

There were two earrings, little silver hoops that had no jewels or bulk. You couldn’t even stick a finger through them. Maybe they were fake silver—you _hoped_ they were fake silver, the person who was actually missing them would want them back for sure.

The same thought came when you looked at what was left: three rings, all the same size. One was silver and studded with tiny diamonds along the band. The other was gold, the band just a touch bit thicker. There was a single diamond sunken into it, so it felt smooth when you ran a finger over it, and on either side of the diamond was a green gemstone that might have been jade.

The third one…well, actually, when you picked up the third one, you realized it was plastic. Just plastic painted gold with an equally plastic adornment: just a yellow circle slightly raised in the design of a turtle’s shell. You supposed it was, at least, unique.

This was a conundrum, you thought to yourself. The gloves no one would care about. The turtle ring, same thing. But the other rings and the hoops seemed too precious to keep and you had no idea who to return them to. This might have just been an act of kindness gone awry. Your mind went to some worst-case scenarios: that the person who it truly belonged to would find out you had them and be reasonably upset, that this was some kind of joke you weren’t getting, that these things were stolen and someone was trying to frame you. And, okay, that last one was pretty far-fetched, but your point remained.

You guessed you could look online for someone looking for them. If not, you could make some kind of public announcement saying someone had gotten the wrong person. Then again, it would be irksome if someone claimed it as theirs just for the cash. You might have to require some proof, or something.

If only the person had left a note, or a name, or…

_Wait._

You twisted the torn paper around, as if expecting something to just magically show up on them. Still blank, of course. Which brought your thoughts to a grinding stop.

If this package had no stamp, no postal address, then didn’t that mean that someone had actually come up to your mailbox and put it in themselves?

The notion of this being an act of kindness didn’t seem so comforting anymore. Because if someone thought you’d lost these things and wanted to return them, then they would have to find out who you were, find your address, and come to your place just to do so. No messages, no “Hey, are these yours? You left them at yadayada.” And even that wasn’t possible, because they weren’t yours and never had been. Maybe someone on the train had left them, and you just so happened to be there, and someone had assumed—but to go this far? It didn’t sound right.

 _These belong to you,_ the shredded note said. It was unsettlingly blunt. Not that you were the goddess of social interaction, but you figured you’d at least write some kind of explanation. You would do a lot of things instead of tracking the wrong person down and going to their house. You hadn’t even noticed any people walking by your house today, let alone any cars. You didn’t think you were looking out for suspicious-package-carrying-individuals.

_These belong to you._

Maybe—

You grit your teeth.

_These belonged to you._

That would be ridiculous. Almost impossible.

You had erased all ties and bonds to whatever life you had before. You gave up your name, the clothes on your back, even your body. CyberLife had never even mentioned to you any former belongings, let alone offered them.

And that was just one question of many. You didn’t know what your story was, but you had always just assumed that you were a soulless AX100 model with a purpose to serve and nothing else. A lifeless bot had no reason to own precious jewelry, or even plastic jewelry. Your previous owners might have been customizing you, but you couldn’t imagine why someone would throw so much money at decorating a robot that (literally) couldn’t care less about how she looked. So maybe you had become deviant at some point, but that just popped up the thousands of possibilities of whether you’d been gifted these things, if you’d stolen them, if you took them out of sentimentality.

That didn’t really matter, though, because no matter if you had worn these things during either of your lives, it ended up—by hand—in your mailbox. So, assuming that this theory was correct, someone knew they belonged to you once and brought them to your house with no announcement. Or they knew you in the past life and brought them to your house with no announcement. Neither sounded particularly pleasing.

Twilight had fallen, and though you were perfectly capable of seeing in the dark, you flicked on the lights just for the sake of not being so creepy. When you sat back down and looked over the things again, your fingers twitched. Trash Can bumped against your ankle in pursuit of the toy.

You slipped on the plastic ring first, and it fit well. Same for the other two rings. The earrings were trickier. You’d never pierced your ears before, so when you turned your touch reception down to 0%, you just pulled your earlobes taut and pushed them through. Thankfully, barely any thirium came out of it, and when you cranked your sensors back up to 80%, you hardly noticed anything. The gloves you pulled on last, and you found that you liked how they fit. They were snug, but not stiff.

You took them in, the soft cloth and tiny stinging in your ears and the miniscule weight on your ring finger, and you paused. You almost wanted to say that the feelings were familiar. That you’d worn these things before, and though half of you said that that made sense if these things had truly been yours at some point, another said that even if that was the case, you shouldn’t be feeling this kind of nostalgia. CyberLife had done a full erasure. Forget about memories, you shouldn’t even be able to feel déjà vu.

Yet still, when you rubbed your pinky against your ring finger to nudge the rings beneath the cloth, or raised a hand to fiddle with the back of an earring, you still had a very eerie feeling that you’ve done these things before. Even though thirty seconds ago you were convinced that you’d never worn gloves or earrings in your life.

The doorbell rang, jarring you out of your thoughts while making them tumble faster. You had so many questions that a visitor—at this time of day—did not rest well on you. They rang again, even though you were about two feet from the door. Evening had fallen and cast everything in a blue glow. You pulled the door open with every intention of seeing an unusually late Rose.

Instead, you found a TR400 of intimidating height and body. His eyes were dark, his hair darker, and his face seemed naturally somber. It seemed as though he was trying to hide his size in an ill-fitting coat and baggy jeans, but it wasn’t working well. Something struck you as very familiar about him.

His lips were pursed and his brows furrowed. When you opened the door, he seemed unable to stay still, clenching his fists and standing on unsteady feet. His eyes looked you up and down, as if assessing you, before he finally said, “Hello.”

“Hello…?” you answered, and movement behind the unknown android pulled your eyes away from him.

On the road that ran past your house, two people were jogging side-by-side down the pavement. One was holding a flashlight, the beam of which bobbed with his steps. When they disappeared behind the trees, another came jogging from the other side of the street. His yellow LED zipped by like a little firefly as he followed the others. And just when you were about to write it off as coincidence, a fourth person who could have been android or human followed.

Your fingers on your doorway tensed. “Is something going on?”

The TR400 took in a short huff of a breath and lifted a hand to his chest in a shaky movement. “My name is Luther.” His voice was very calm and smooth, even when his face held such seriousness. “I know we don’t know each other, but we need your help.”

“Uh—” A fifth person ran past your house. You cracked open your door more, not sure of what else there was to do. “What is it?”

Luther’s jaw clenched. “I know you are upset with Alice, but I’m asking you to put that aside for right now.”

That’s where you knew him from. In whatever memories you had of seeing Kara from afar, you were sure Luther was in at least half of them, talking to her and laughing with her or even carrying Alice in one arm. He had seemed a quiet type to you, but the smiles he showed were warm even though they were not directed at you. He was strong, as all TR400s were, but he didn’t seem threatening.

You wondered for a second why he was taking so long to tell you what the matter was, but just as you did so, he said, “Alice left the house earlier today and she hasn’t come back. Kara and I have tried to contact her, but she isn’t responding. No one knows where she is.”

 _Oh,_ you thought dumbly.

Words came stuttering out of your mouth, a finger pointing quite stupidly at the sidewalk. “She walked by earlier today, I didn’t think to—”

“I know,” Luther said, “we know where she was going, but we don’t know why she didn’t come back. We think something is wrong and we’re all heading out to search for her. Can you please come help us?”

The reality of the situation finally hit you. If Alice wasn’t even answering to Luther or Kara’s calls, then something terrible must have happened to her.

Alice was just a kid. Android or not, if someone or something had tried to hurt her, she would be easily overpowered. Unless something else had happened, like she’d fallen or gotten hurt bad enough to keep her from calling out, because wouldn’t she do that? Alice’s first action would have been to call for help, you were sure of that. And she surely wouldn’t ignore Luther or Kara.

Perhaps most worrying was that, unless she was in stasis, Alice being unable to respond to her mother or friend probably meant she’d been shut down. Or maybe she was in emergency standby. So either her memories of her mother and her friends and really her entire life had already been wiped away, or they were going to be if she wasn’t found soon.

You subconsciously rubbed your pinky against the rings again, and you paused.

The things you wore still needed to be solved. You needed to figure something out—who gave them to you, if you had known them before, if it was a mistake, why they had come all the way to your home, if someone else was looking for them, why they gave you a feeling of familiarity, and why you felt it at all. You needed answers as soon as you could possibly get them. With how many humans and androids alike had passed by in what you assumed was the direction of the search, you doubted that your help and yours alone was pivotal.

Luther was watching you with a mix of impatience, desperation, and hope. The fact that you had not immediately answered yes was giving him pause. Because anyone else would be jumping out to help right now, and maybe others had, but you hesitated.

“I know Alice has upset you,” he said slowly in a voice that was both careful and wary. “But she’s just a little girl. Please.”

**DON’T JOIN THE SEARCH—Proceed to Chapter 7  
JOIN THE SEARCH—Proceed to Chapter 8**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to comment your choices!


	6. Chapter 6

A week after your brief encounter with Alice and Kara, the temperature took a drop. You quickly realized this once you woke up from stasis in the morning. You never paid much mind to your thermostat—usually keeping it at a normal 72 degrees just in case Rose came to visit—but your sensors tightened up and an involuntary shudder ran down your back. Outside your finally-repaired window, the grass was sparkling with frost.

Your morning routine was really no different from the norm. You changed your clothes for the day, took care of whatever daily traditions you had (i.e. give the ever-ungrateful Trash Can his food), and headed off into the city. You would be going to three different homes today—two regulars, another person with a house party coming up. You honestly didn’t care for one of the regulars—she curled her lips every time she saw you, and every time you so much as spoke, she glared as though just addressing her was an insult—but money was money. You had considered, and were still considering, getting a system update that would fit you into a better, more interesting job, but you had yet to find one that enticed you.

So you go to the three houses. You dust the furniture and do the laundry and clean the dishes and wipe the windows and polish the wood and shine the silverware and vacuum the carpets. You let Miss Curly Lip’s cat Snickerdoodle rub against your legs while you work, explain to a fascinated but horrified Mrs. Burgess why she can never mix bleach and vinegar, and hunt down a needle and thread to patch up a tear in the hostess’ evening gown. The homeowners deposit directly into your account, even Miss Curly Lip. After one or two too many encounters of someone trying to cheat you out of your pay, you usually asked—but did not demand—that you were paid beforehand. Most did not mind. The hostess even threw in an extra ten bucks just for your sewing help.

You came back home covered in dust and probably smelling of lemon and picked up the morning paper from your doorstep. You read about the latest development in the Russian conflict, the newest effort to revive the pollinating bee population with the ones in captivity, rumors of President Warren and android revolutionist Markus in talks once again. Trash Can came back for more food, the ungrateful freeloader, and you spent most of the afternoon doing little things. You tried to knit, you tried to fold an origami dragon, you tried to paint a sunflower and for some reason it looked more like a canary because of course it did. You turned on the little television in the corner of your bedroom, found nothing to watch, and turned it off again. You considered going back into the city and changed your mind in the end.

You hated when you got into these melancholic, self-pitying moods, but once again, as a daily norm, you were left wondering if this was what life was for you. Go to work, come home, do nothing, wait until tomorrow. Talk to Rose and wander the city. Try and fail to find a hobby to get invested in. Consider taking a step in some direction, like getting a new job or a new house or maybe even leaving Detroit entirely, but never go through with it. This situation is, of course, no one’s fault but your own. _You_ decided to go out into the world. _You_ decided to wipe away everything you were before.

On the other hand, maybe you were just making a big deal about being bored.

Rose eventually showed up on the sidewalk, cut across the grass, and met you at the front door. She was wearing a soft-looking purple jumper and was holding a plastic box of jars filled with amber honey. Each jar had a little checkerboard cloth on the lid.

“Hey,” you greeted her.

“Hey yourself,” she answered. She moved to hold the box against her hip, making the jars musically tinkle against one another.

“Need help?”

She waved a hand at you, giving you the impression that she’d already been posed the question. “Nah. Just dropping these off to a lucky few. This’ll probably be the last batch ‘til spring; we gotta leave enough for the little guys to keep going.” She plucked a jar from the batch and held it out to you. “How about you take one? First jar on the house.”

“Um…” You tapped a finger against your non-stomach-holding, all-mechanism-and-machinery belly in response.

“Oh—” Rose coughed and put it back. “Right.”

“I can keep it for sentimentality,” you joked. “Just think—a hundred years from now, when all bees are extinct, I can barter the world’s last jar of honey for thousands of dollars. And when people ask why an android has it, I’ll tell them that a very annoying human gave it to me.”

Rose glared at you with a suppressed smile. There was fake fury in her voice when she snapped, “Well, congratulations. You just landed yourself on the Chapman Blacklist.”

“I thought I was already at the top?”

Rose just shook her head at you. Then her eyes lit up, and she reached into the box again. “Oh! I almost forgot.”

She held out what looked to you to be a fuzzy green pipe cleaner with a cluster of tissue paper pinned to one end. The layers were blue, pink, and purple, with a cluster of yellow beads in the middle. You took it with a raised brow. The paper rustled in the light breeze.

“Alice made a whole bunch of them,” explained Rose. She was smiling. “She said she wanted me to give you one while I was here.”

“Aw,” you cooed aloud. Winding the pipe cleaner between your fingers, you couldn’t help but smile. “She’s sweet.”

“She said she saw you make some.” Rose leaned to look past you and pointed. The centerpiece of your table was a wooden bowl filled with paper-folded flowers—pinkish roses, white lilies, purple tulips. “She had to make do with what she had. Speaking of which—” Rose looked out over your flowerbeds and said, “Think you’ll root those up soon?”

There would be an inevitable freeze soon, you knew. Your flowers wouldn’t be able to hold up. “Yeah. Guess I should.”

“Go ahead and get to it now.” Rose took her box of honey by both hands again and turned for the sidewalk. “Even you aren’t going to be working out when it gets chilly. I’ll come talk to you later, okay?”

Of course, they weren’t actual flowers. Just faux imitations made with a sort of waxy material to have the feel of real ones. Those in the beds were starting to “wilt” i.e. the paint was starting to wear off to show the brown beneath. After bidding Rose goodbye, you ducked back inside to get a garbage bag and some gloves. You put Alice’s flower in the bowl with the others.

But just as you were reaching for the doorknob, movement on the road made you pause. Alice was walking down the sidewalk alone, in a sweater striped in blues and pinks and fuzzy boots to match. Her dark hair was twisted into a knot at the back of her head. She had a little satchel bouncing against her hip.

Alice had passed by your house often as of late, and if you could, you would wave to her. She was probably heading out to the cornfield a road or two away. The other kids liked to play around there, for good reason. At this time of year, it was a flat expanse of dry dirt and shriveled stalks, a makeshift ballfield. You just hoped they were being careful.

You almost opened the door, but stopped once again when Alice paused in front of your mailbox. She opened her satchel, pulled something out, and slid it inside. Then she kept walking.

You walked out then, and when Alice saw you, she smiled and waved, and you did the same. The two of you had not actually spoken to one another after the window debacle, besides a few exchanges of “Hey, Alice!” and “Hey, A!” You were happy you hadn’t scared her off. When she had come to apologize, she was so small and sheepish. She probably would have gone running if you’d so much as raised your voice.

Once Alice is gone, you decide to wait until after your gardening to get her delivery out of the mailbox. You dug the old flower buds up from the dirt and tossed them in a garbage bag and put the frost-resistant flowers in their place. With the days growing shorter, the sun had sunk by the time you were done, leaving nothing but dull orange light to see by.

You did think that it was kind of late for Alice to still be out. But you knew that several kids stayed at the cornfield well past dark and would return later. She wasn’t alone, at least.

You dumped the bag in the garbage cans, and opened your mailbox. Inside, there was a thin book, blue hardback. The cover showed a girl in a cornflower blue dress looking up at a cat with a devilish smile. A rabbit in a waistcoat was looking worriedly at his pocketwatch; a man with a goofy smile and purple top hat was pouring tea into a cup with no bottom. The silvery letters, framed with playing cards, read _Lewis Carroll—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland._ You cracked a smile to yourself. You had thought for a while that Alice had forgotten about your little deal; not that you would be upset if she did.

You were about to close the door to the mailbox back, but something else inside stopped you. You were sure that Alice had only put in one thing. You pulled it out.

The bundle was about as big as your hand, wrapped in some plain blue paper haphazardly taped together. Whatever inside was mostly soft, but you could feel something hard and square in the middle. When you shook it, something inside just barely bounced around. There were no names, no stamp. Just a little note in black marker that read, very simply, _These belong to you._

It didn’t bode well for you, but doubting that it would be something so dangerous as an explosive, and considering that it might be some childish prank, or maybe something else entirely, you shut the mailbox and walked back to your house. Trash Can was sitting on the doorstep with his half-missing tail swishing lazily. All he gave you was a demanding little meow until you opened the door. Then he snaked between your ankles to get into the much warmer sanctuary of your house.

You took a second to get the one toy you got him, a little robotic mouse that scampered across the floor on robotic wheels. You had considered maybe getting a CyberLife-brand mouse, one that was almost impossible to differentiate from real ones save for its LED, but the idea just creeped you out too much. Also, they were too cute to get caught in claws again and again. So you took a seat at the table while Trash Can lunged for a pastel-colored toy rodent across the floor.

The paper ripped apart easily, and inside, you found black cloth and a little box. Picking up the cloth, you realized that it was actually a pair of gloves, made of a soft and stretchy material covered in dark faux leather on the palms and fingers. You knew just by looking at them that you had never owned them before. This would be the first winter you’d ever live through; even if you didn’t have control of how you took in the temperature, you wouldn’t have needed them until now. This mysterious sender had gotten the wrong person—assuming that it wasn’t Alice who had put them in your mailbox, because you were almost positive she hadn’t.

Just out of curiosity, though, you peeled the little box open. Its contents were much more valuable and a little startling.

There were two earrings, little silver hoops that had no jewels or bulk. You couldn’t even stick a finger through them. Maybe they were fake silver—you _hoped_ they were fake silver, the person who was actually missing them would want them back for sure.

The same thought came when you looked at what was left: three rings, all the same size. One was silver and studded with tiny diamonds along the band. The other was gold, the band just a touch bit thicker. There was a single diamond sunken into it, so it felt smooth when you ran a finger over it, and on either side of the diamond was a green gemstone that might have been jade.

The third one…well, actually, when you picked up the third one, you realized it was plastic. Just plastic painted gold with an equally plastic adornment: just a yellow circle slightly raised in the design of a turtle’s shell. You supposed it was, at least, unique.

This was a conundrum, you thought to yourself. The gloves no one would care about. The turtle ring, same thing. But the other rings and the hoops seemed too precious to keep and you had no idea who to return them to. This might have just been an act of kindness gone awry. At least they had gone through the misguided trouble of trying to do the right thing.

You guessed you could look online for someone looking for them. If not, you could make some kind of public announcement saying someone had gotten the wrong person. Then again, it would be irksome if someone claimed it as theirs just for the cash. You might have to require some proof, or something.

If only the person had left a note, or a name, or…

_Wait._

You twisted the torn paper around, as if expecting something to just magically show up on them. Still blank, of course. Which brought your thoughts to a grinding stop.

If this package had no stamp, no postal address, then didn’t that mean that someone had actually come up to your mailbox and put it in themselves?

The notion of this being an act of kindness didn’t seem so comforting anymore. Because if someone thought you’d lost these things and wanted to return them, then they would have to find out who you were, find your address, and come to your place just to do so. No messages, no “Hey, are these yours? You left them at yadayada.” And even that wasn’t possible, because they weren’t yours and never had been. Maybe someone on the train had left them, and you just so happened to be there, and someone had assumed—but to go this far? It didn’t sound right.

Actually, maybe it was someone in the neighborhood. In which case, not so discomfiting, but still confusing.

 _These belong to you,_ the shredded note said. It was unsettlingly blunt. Not that you were the goddess of social interaction, but you figured you’d at least write some kind of explanation. You would do a lot of things instead of tracking the wrong person down and going to their house. You hadn’t even noticed any people walking by your house today, let alone any cars. You didn’t think you were looking out for suspicious-package-carrying-individuals.

_These belong to you._

Maybe—

You grit your teeth.

_These belonged to you._

That would be ridiculous. Almost impossible.

You had erased all ties and bonds to whatever life you had before. You gave up your name, the clothes on your back, even your body. CyberLife had never even mentioned to you any former belongings, let alone offered them.

And that was just one question of many. You didn’t know what your story was, but you had always just assumed that you were a soulless AX100 model with a purpose to serve and nothing else. A lifeless bot had no reason to own precious jewelry, or even plastic jewelry. Your previous owners might have been customizing you, but you couldn’t imagine why someone would throw so much money at decorating a robot that (literally) couldn’t care less about how she looked. So maybe you had become deviant at some point, but that just popped up the thousands of possibilities of whether you’d been gifted these things, if you’d stolen them, if you took them out of sentimentality.

That didn’t really matter, though, because no matter if you had worn these things during either of your lives, it ended up—by hand—in your mailbox. So, assuming that this theory was correct, and it wasn’t just a neighbor, someone knew they belonged to you once and brought them to your house with no announcement. Or they knew you in the past life and brought them to your house with no announcement. Neither sounded particularly pleasing.

Twilight had fallen, and though you were perfectly capable of seeing in the dark, you flicked on the lights just for the sake of not being so creepy. When you sat back down and looked over the things again, your fingers twitched. Trash Can bumped against your ankle in pursuit of the toy.

You slipped on the plastic ring first, and it fit well. Same for the other two rings. The earrings were trickier. You’d never pierced your ears before, so when you turned your touch reception down to 0%, you just pulled your earlobes taut and pushed them through. Thankfully, barely any thirium came out of it, and when you cranked your sensors back up to 80%, you hardly noticed anything. The gloves you pulled on last, and you found that you liked how they fit. They were snug, but not stiff.

You took them in, the soft cloth and tiny stinging in your ears and the miniscule weight on your ring finger, and you paused. You almost wanted to say that the feelings were familiar. That you’d worn these things before, and though half of you said that that made sense if these things had truly been yours at some point, another said that even if that was the case, you shouldn’t be feeling this kind of nostalgia. CyberLife had done a full erasure. Forget about memories, you shouldn’t even be able to feel déjà vu.

Yet still, when you rubbed your pinky against your ring finger to nudge the rings beneath the cloth, or raised a hand to fiddle with the back of an earring, you still had a very eerie feeling that you’ve done these things before. Even though thirty seconds ago you were convinced that you’d never worn gloves or earrings in your life.

The doorbell rang, jarring you out of your thoughts while making them tumble faster. You had so many questions that a visitor—at this time of day—did not rest well on you. They rang again, even though you were about two feet from the door. Evening had fallen and cast everything in a blue glow. You pulled the door open with every intention of seeing an unusually late Rose.

Instead, you found a TR400 of intimidating height and body. His eyes were dark, his hair darker, and his face seemed naturally somber. It seemed as though he was trying to hide his size in an ill-fitting coat and baggy jeans, but it wasn’t working well. Something struck you as very familiar about him.

His lips were pursed and his brows furrowed. When you opened the door, he seemed to calm down just a bit, but his feet were unsteady. He gave a somewhat relieved but short sigh and said, “Hello.”

“Hello…?” you answered, and movement behind the unknown android pulled your eyes away from him.

On the road that ran past your house, two people were jogging side-by-side down the pavement. One was holding a flashlight, the beam of which bobbed with his steps. When they disappeared behind the trees, another came jogging from the other side of the street. His yellow LED zipped by like a little firefly as he followed the others. And just when you were about to write it off as coincidence, a fourth person who could have been android or human followed.

Your fingers on your doorway tensed. “Is something going on?”

The TR400 took in a short huff of a breath and lifted a hand to his chest in a shaky movement. “I’m Luther.” His voice was very calm and smooth, even when his face held such seriousness. “I’m a friend of Kara and Alice.”

That’s where you knew him from. In whatever memories you had of seeing Kara from afar, you were sure Luther was in at least half of them, talking to her and laughing with her or even carrying Alice in one arm. He had seemed a quiet type to you, but the smiles he showed were warm even though they were not directed at you. He was strong, as all TR400s were, but he didn’t seem threatening.

“Uh—” A fifth person ran past your house. You cracked open your door more, not sure of what else there was to do. “What’s wrong?”

Luther’s jaw clenched. “Alice left the house earlier today and she hasn’t come back. Kara and I have tried to contact her, but she isn’t responding. No one knows where she is.”

 _Oh no,_ you thought dumbly.

Words came stuttering out of your mouth, a finger pointing quite stupidly at the sidewalk. “She walked by earlier today, I didn’t think to—I thought she was just going to play—”

“I know,” Luther said gently, “we know where she was going, but we don’t know why she didn’t come back. We think something is wrong and we’re all heading out to search for her. Can you please come help us?”

The reality of the situation finally hit you. If Alice wasn’t even answering to Luther or Kara’s calls, then something terrible must have happened to her.

Alice was just a kid. A sweet kid, and entirely defenseless. If someone or something had hurt her, there was nothing she could have done. Unless something else had happened, like she’d fallen or gotten hurt bad enough to keep her from calling out. Alice wasn’t stupid. She knew all she needed to do was concentrate and she get help no matter where she was. And she surely wouldn’t ignore Luther or Kara.

Perhaps most worrying was that, unless she was in stasis, Alice being unable to respond to her mother or friend probably meant she’d been shut down. Or maybe she was in emergency standby. So either her memories of her mother and her friends and really her entire life had already been wiped away, or they were going to be if she wasn’t found soon. Either way, that meant Alice had been hurt—and you knew that YK models were one of the very few pre-evolution models made to feel pain, even if Alice hadn’t gotten sensory upgrades.

You subconsciously rubbed your pinky against the rings again, and you paused.

The things you wore still needed to be solved. You needed to figure something out—who gave them to you, if you had known them before, if it was a mistake, why they had come all the way to your home, if someone else was looking for them, why they gave you a feeling of familiarity, and why you felt it at all. You needed answers as soon as you could possibly get them. With how many humans and androids alike had passed by in what you assumed was the direction of the search, you doubted that your help and yours alone was pivotal.

Luther was watching you with a mix of impatience, desperation, and hope. The fact that you had not immediately answered yes was giving him pause. Because anyone else would be jumping out to help right now, and maybe others had, but you hesitated.

**DON’T JOIN THE SEARCH—Proceed to Chapter 9  
JOIN THE SEARCH—Proceed to Chapter 10**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't forget to comment your choices!

**Author's Note:**

> Please comment what choices you make! :)


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